I, Death

Sin Eater: Chapter 1

Allan’s third mistake had been not realizing that Richard would plant someone as a customer to test him out. It was a simple matter of measuring the weight of the product before handing it over to Allan, then measuring it again after the purchase. And it was a damn good skim, too. Barely a sixteenth of an ounce — something that might be attributed to humidity.

But Richard knew better. After all, he might look and talk like some uneducated punk, but in order to stay ahead of the law, in order to stay on top of the low-lives working for him, Richard had to be quite a bit sharper than he appeared.

“I gave you a chance,” Richard said, lifting Allan off his feet again and smashing the other side of his head against the door leading to the alley. “And you blew it.”

“I dever cheated dou, Richie,” Allan sputtered, blood continuing to flow from his broken nose.

Richard punched Allan in the left eye and threw him against the shelving unit.

This time it toppled to the floor with a resounding crash, with boxes, tins of sauce and meat, bags of sugar and flour all clattering and spilling to the floor.

Richard stood over Allan’s thin body watching the teen try to get up, try to push himself up on one of the uprooted shelves that collapsed under his weight.

On the other side of the shelving unit, the door from the kitchen area opened and Johnnie stuck his head in. “The fuck is going on in here?”  His head bobbed around like one of those turtles you find in a Caribbean souvenir shop as he surveyed the damage to the room. Then he spotted Richard and grimaced.

Richard just smiled at him. “A little business, Johnnie. If you don’t mind. Now fuck off.”

“Sorry Ritchie,” Johnnie said and closed the door again.

“Damn right you’re sorry,” Richard muttered, enjoying how frightened Johnnie was of offending Richard; or, more specifically, the organization Richard represented. While Richard didn’t know what exactly the Brecht organization held over Johnnie, he was glad to have the restaurant and bar as one of his convenient main operation locations.

During the minor distraction, Allan had managed to crawl backwards off the fallen shelving and was on his knees on the floor. He was holding his swollen left eye with one hand and had a can of tomatoes in his right hand.

Richard laughed. “I can’t fucking believe you, man. First you take me for some stupid punk who you think isn’t going to notice that you’re skimming from me. Now, you’ve got ahold of this can. What, you going to attack me with it, going to try to bust my head with it? You’re fucking pathetic.”

“D-oh, Richie. D-oh, I wasn’t.”

Richard kicked the can out of Allan’s hand.

“I’ve wasted enough time here.” Richard pulled the knife from the sheath on the back of his belt. “You know, I was going to just beat you, teach you a lesson and give you another chance. But you won’t simply admit what you’ve done.”

“I dibn’t do adything,” Allan blubbered, finally able to move up into a crouch and then stand.

“See, that’s what pisses me off more than anything,” Richard said, bringing the knife down into the side of Allan’s neck. He pulled the blade out and watched a stream of blood shoot in a fine arch onto the room’s small window. “You still just won’t admit it.”

He brought the knife down again on the opposite side, this time striking closer to the front of Allan’s throat. His throat and mouth made a strange hissing, wheezing sound and this time the blood splattered up and across his right cheek, covering even more of those ugly damn freckles.

Richard felt a warm moment of satisfaction as he watched Allan’s hands clawing frantically at both sides of his throat.

He stepped back enough to ensure the blood splatter didn’t hit the white Green Shag Classic dress shirt he was wearing and was enjoying the moment of the teen’s panic, when a shadow crossed the dirty blood splattered window.

Someone is outside, Richard thought, and stepped over to peek out the window.

As he brought his face close to the window, he was startled to see a thin, boney face, no more than an inch away on the other side of the glass. The face was covered in a strange looking patch of whiskers and a pair of blue eyes framed in a road-map havoc of bloodshot lines. The face of this street bum wore an expression of utter surprise, and, as Richard felt a strange bolt — as if something was striking and puncturing him on the right side of his head — he thought about how comical the expression on the bum’s face looked.

Then he dropped dead to lie on the floor beside Allan.

The student’s blood spurted out all over Richard’s Green Shag Classic shirt.

[The rest of this novel will continue to be rolled out on a regular basis here on Wattpad, but if you can't wait to read it, the print and eBook versions are available through all major online retailers. Publisher Atomic Fez's page (with links) is here:  http://www.atomicfez.com/book-catalogue/9781927609033.html]